Boasting the largest number of participant turn-ups ever, the latest IGDA meet hosted at MindValley brought together a total of 65 people with all sorts of experience or interests in game development inside the same room to mingle and learn from each other. Highlights of the meet were the three lengthy talks by Eugene Foo on the art of Kayangan Saga, Yap Chun Fei on the Tech of Liquid Rock Games, and BuZz (real name Bazil Akmal bin Bidin) on what the heck is wrong with the game industry. To those who couldn’t attend, the kind folks from IGDA had posted up a series of recordings from the three speakers online for your viewing pleasure (which you can view below as well).

The Art of Kayangan Saga by Eugene Foo [1/2]

The Art of Kayangan Saga by Eugene Foo [2/2]

What the f**k is wrong with the game industry? by BuZz [1/2]

What the f**k is wrong with the game industry? by BuZz [2/2]

The Tech of Liquid Rock Games by Yap Chun Fei [1/3]

The Tech of Liquid Rock Games by Yap Chun Fei [2/3]

The Tech of Liquid Rock Games by Yap Chun Fei [3/3]

1. Tell us briefly about your game, Magnight.

Seth: Magnight is a puzzle platformer that relies on the fundamentals of magnetism to win the game.

Cadrick: Magnight is a 2D physics-based puzzle solving platform game. Players need to utilize the power of magnetic effect to solve the puzzles. Basically it is all about “Attract” and “Repel” between 2 magnetic objects.

Umar: Magnight is a 2D side-scrolling puzzle platformer game created by students and fresh graduates under the GameINC training program by MDEC. The game incorporates real-time simulated physics and also magnetism as its core gameplay. GameINC is an annual program whereby the brightest undergraduate students in Malaysia are handpicked into 14 weeks internship course to undergo full cycle game development process under the mentorship by industry experts and academicians.

2. Can you introduce your team?

Our team is made out of:

Seth Wong Ker Siung (Team Lead, Gameplay Programmer)
David Tan Xi Siang (Game Designer)
Cham Wei Chuan (Game Designer)
Umar Mochtar (Lead Artist)
Steven Gan (Artist)
Hiew Sau Fung (Artist)
Ting Kee Biew (Artist)
Ahmad Hamidullah Adb Rahman (Artist)
Cadrick Loh (Lead Programmer)
Edvinn Lai (Game Engine Programmer)
Kaori Wong (Game Engine Programmer)
Mohd Zaid Mohd Zin (Level Editor Programmer)
Wang Hsin Jo (Level Editor Programmer)
Yeong Hong Chun (Gameplay Programmer)
Ng Choon Hooi (Gameplay Programmer)
Aaron Chow (Gameplay Programmer).

Cadrick: GameINC consists of 1 team lead, 2 games designer, 8 programmers and 5 artists. In the programming team, we have further separated into 2 sub-teams based on their roles. One team will be coding the engine part and another team will be handling the gameplay part. In short, we have 4 engine programmers and 4 gameplay programmers.

For engine programmers, they are basically doing the the base code of the engine and providing basic functions for gameplay programmers. Besides that, engine programmers are responsible in coding the physics engine. For gameplay programmers, they are mostly coding the gameplay mechanics.

Umar: We were a team of 5 artists, 2 designers, and 9 programmers. The team lead was Seth, the lead programmer was Cadrick, and the art lead was me, Umar. The artists that did the art for the game were Fung, Hamid, Biew and Steven Gan. The game designers were David and Cham. The programmers were divided into 2 groups: engine programmers and gameplay programmers. The engine programmers were Cadrick, Koori, Zaid and Wang while the gameplay programmers were John, Edvinn, Nancy, Aaron and Seth.

3. What is your background in making games?

Seth: I have been fond of games ever since my 1st ATARI back when I was 3 years old. Since hten I’ve always been fascinated by games and the joy they bring. Evidently, when I found out that APIIT – UCTI offeres a course in Games Development, I felt like this is the passion that I should pursue.

4. How did you come up with the concept for the game?

Cadrick: It all started with the concept of attract and repel. We’ve been through the stages of idea pitching and the mentors were filtering what we have came out with and finally they’ve decided to go with the attract and repel concept.

Umar: The concept for the game was a mixture of several ideas that was pitched to the mentors by the participants after weeks of discussions and pitching, and it was refined and altered numerous times before it was finalized. As for the art, we sort of went for Tim Burton’s Alice meets steampunk. We of course added different elements along the way as we didn’t want to constrain ourselves within that theme.

5. What development tools did you use?

Seth: The development tools that our team used are: Microsoft XNA, 3D Studio Max, Farseer Physics Engine 2.0, and a lot of head banging =.=”

Cadrick: We used Microsoft XNA Game Studio to develop our game. Besides that, we are using a 3rd party physics engine known as Farseer Physics for XNA. Farseer Physics for XNA is based on the Box3D physics engine.

Umar: We used Autodesk 3DS Max and Adobe Photoshop for the art, and Microsoft XNA as the game engine.

6. Are you currently doing game development full-time?

Seth: Currently I’m still studying for a Degree in Games Development in APIIT – UCTI. Graduating late 2011, but yea that’s the plan, although after graduation if a career path in games development proves to be elusive, I’ll go into other fields of IT for life support and continue developing games during my free time.

Cadrick: Yes we did do full-time game development but it was during our internship program.

7. How long did it take for you to develop the game?

Seth: The game took 3 months to construct. That was the time frame given to us.

Umar: It took us 14 weeks to develop the game, from brain-storming sessions to post-production.

8. What are some of the challenges that you face in developing games in the South-East Asian region?

Seth: I’ve yet to venture into society in this field, but if I had to say it I would say it is the fact that the community in this region is not known for its financial support for games. Local investors have yet to realize the potential in games development thus the growth of this industry locally is still not yet up to speed.

Cadrick: Honestly, I would say game development in the South-East Asian region is still very young and it is hard to find game developers out there. Whenever we have meetings (which are organzied by IGDA Malaysia), most probably we will be seeing the same faces again and again. Although it is a hard time for us but we still can see the growing of game development happening in the South-East Asian region. I believe in the future, we will see more improvement in game development and let’s hope to see more cool games which are originally developed by South-East Asian!

Umar: We didn’t face much challenges caused by our location when we were developing the game. We pretty much had all the things we needed to develop the game.

9. If you could start the project over again, what would you do differently?

Seth: If I could start over, I would focus on making the level editor more user-friendly, so that players can also have fun building their own custom levels. One of the key aspects of the game was to allow players to customize their own levels but at the end of the development phase, the mentors deemed the level editor too user-unfriendly and it was revoked from the release.

Umar: I’m really satisfied with how the game turned out and it’s very hard to say what I would do differently. I guess it would be that I wish we had pushed the art further, exploring other different themes, trying different techniques and mixing more elements while keeping everything consistent. But I’m pretty sure artists are rarely satisfied with their own work. .

10. Any advice for other indie game developers out there?

Seth: I don’t think I’m in a position to give any advice yet, fact is I’m still studying. But to anyone who has an interest or passion in making games, seek out opportunities such as GameINC and other similar programs. It provides valuable insight into how things work and to me it would ultimately prove as a valuable experience in the career path of a game developer.

Cadrick: Start prototyping whenever you have some ideas in mind. The more times you spend on your games, the better quality you will produce at the end of the game development stage!

Umar: Don’t let the fire die

Follow GameINC on their website {link}

A very beautiful Monday morning, where I’ve finally recovered after weeks of “debugging” the viral infection. A week after the Unity3D Workshop held by ACA Pacific, my Facebook’s feeds show me a great post by Terence Tan on Unity3D titled “Tips on Unity3d (Top 10)”. Having being part of the mentoring team looking after MSC Malaysia IPCC Games Competition, where some of them using Unity3D as their development tool. I believe this is a MUST read for developers out there, especially the MSC Malaysia IPCC 2011 is around the corner, plus the hype about Unity3D in recent years, it’s however, not as easy as one would think. Link

I’d hope to cover more about local Unity3D developments, especially on the networking side. We’ve seen cross-platform game by Unity3D, where a game is playable on the browsers, iphone, ipad and sharing a single game data (Registration, saved games etc). If you’re working on Unity3D and would like to share your findings, please leave a message below and I’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, check out  the Part 1 and Part 2 Unity3D Networking Concept by Terence Tan.

Seize the Opportunity in Mobile Games Creation

Seize the Opportunity in Mobile Games Creation

I wake up this morning reading a shocking RT by pushbuttonlab, a big announcement by Adobe! I hit the link and here’s the first paragraph reads: “These are exciting times. Today, at the Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco (of which we’re proud Gold Sponsors), Adobe has announced the public availability of a beta version of the Flash Player, codenamed Molehill, that has a very interesting new feature: hardware accelerated 3D support.”

The rest? Believe me, you’ll want to read this!

1. Tell us briefly about your game, Helsing’s Fire.

Helsing’s Fire is a casual puzzle game for iOS. In it, you control Dr. Helsing and his assistant Raffton as they battle against Dracula’s evil horde. It’s got a fairly novel mechanic of manipulating light and shadow by dragging a torch around the screen. This torch casts detailed shadows in the environment and as it illuminates the monsters, a magical tonic can be used to attack. There are different monsters and different tonics, so you have to be careful and clever with your light and tonic usage to clear each puzzle.

2. Can you introduce your team? And what is your background in making games?

Helsing’s Fire was created by my wife Keiko and I. Ratloop itself includes a few more members and was established way back in 1998 in the US. We had some limited success at first with a PC game called “Gearhead Garage”, but eventually ended up going our separate ways until until a few years ago, when we regrouped to create a drawing game called “Mightier” for PC. Aside from Ratloop, Keiko and I have also worked at various larger game developers where bills were paid and experience was gained.

3. How did you come up with the concept for the game?

For Helsing’s Fire, there wasn’t really any “AH HAH!” moment when the concept materialized. I had been playing around with the iPhone SDK, making a few prototypes, and worked out a simple way to do the shadow casting. From there, I tried some different ways to use this in an interesting way before eventually settling on the current puzzle mechanics. This is actually similar to how “Mightier” came about. For that game, we started with the drawing tech, then spent a few weeks brainstorming ideas of how to turn it into an actual game. I guess I like when the parameters are established (the tech), and we just have to figure out a fun way to exploit it.

4. What development tools did you use?

We used the typical tools for an iOS game: Macs and XCode. Most of the art was created in Photoshop, and I wrote the music in GarageBand. Typically for our games, we write a bunch of custom tools from scratch (usually in C#), but because the iOS tools are so good, we didn’t need much of that for Helsing’s Fire. The only custom tool was a very simple level editor written in Cocoa.

5. Are you doing game development full-time?

Yup. Both Mightier and Helsing’s Fire were created as part-time projects while we worked day jobs as game developers. Those pesky day jobs are gone now, and at the moment we’re hard at work with the rest of the Ratloop Asia team on a Rocketbirds game for PSN.

6. How long did it take for you to develop the game?

It look a little longer than we expected, mainly because it was a part-time project. From the first line of code until the initial release was about 6 months. Since then, we’ve put in several months worth of work on updates and enhancements.

7. What are some the challenges that you face in developing games in Asia?

We haven’t run into too many issues so far. One thing that makes it a little tricky is the target market. Most of what we produce is designed for the western market, because that’s what we understand best. So it’s important to stay connected and aware of what’s going on in the US or Europe.

8. If you could start the project over again, what would you do differently?

Hmmm. Tough question. We’re usually pretty fast and loose with game development; Plan big, and cut a lot. As far as Helsing’s Fire goes, I think it turned out well, but a part of me wishes we could easily release it for other platforms. Developing with the iOS SDK made things really easy for Apple devices, but porting is non-trivial. In the future, I think we’ll try to stick to generic C++/OpenGL so that getting on the various mobile and PC platforms is easier.

9. Any advice for other indie game developers out there?

Ok, another tough question. Speaking for both Keiko and I, our time at large, established game developers really improved our ability to finish a game on time with a good amount of polish. We learned a lot about how to focus on the player, simplify the design, and test the hell out of it. I think the best way to get this experience as an indie is to start and finish games on a consistent schedule. It can be really tempting to add features and improve a game forever, but the real challenge is to say “It’s done” and ship it. With each game completed, you learn more and more about each step of the process and it becomes easier and faster to go from an idea to a finished product.

Follow Ratloop, Lucas and Keiko Pope on their website {link}

This year’s Global Game Jam came to a close amidst the piles of empty pizza boxes and soda bottles as bleary-eyed game-developer zombies shamble out of the MAC3 building in Cyberjaya. 19 individuals with only one thing on their mind, to develop the best damn game they could in 48 hours.

But first a quick flashback to where it all began, two weeks ago, on a Friday night. After work or after studies, the odd collection of game enthusiasts gathered like zombies on a fresh carcass.

After being sufficiently confused by Keita Takahashi’s keynote, the theme for this year was revealed to be ‘Extinction’. The jammers having not had their dinners yet converged at the local eatery (which shall not be named for their poor service and food) to quickly brainstorm and come up with ideas for their game. Conversation was light-hearted and animated as the jammers got to know one another. Some students, some hobbyists, and quite a number of industry veterans were amongst this years line-up and it was shaping up to be quite an interesting Game Jam. This year even saw us having some female participants which was sorely lacking in the 2010 Game Jam.

Back at the Jam-site which MDeC was so gracious to provide, the pitching session began in earnest. Everyone had an idea and everyone stood out there to pitch theirs. After a quick round of elimination, only 4 ideas remained and the other jammers were free to join whichever project they felt liked. At 11-ish, the development finally began with teams discussing ideas and formulating a game-plan.

So, two days of development later, although the jammers were starting to smell a little ripe, it was evident on everyone’s faces that they were determined to finish their creations. At 3:00pm, the teams put on the finishing touches and began uploading their work onto the Game Jam portal. At 5:00pm, fellow developers from SAGE Interactive visited the Jam site to witness the presentation of the games which marked the end of the GameJam.

The four games were Extinctor, Ecoseeds, Almost Extinct and Angry Chopsticks. One-by-one, the teams got up in front and presented their game. Extinctor was a 3D- game centered around a Galactic Worm that devoured planets created using Unity. Ecoseeds was an XNA baby and was more of a hybrid between a time-management farming game and an open-ended simulation, where collecting star-seeds and planting them would yield crops which would then in turn be used to build and grow animals. Almost Extinct is a flash-game of protecting wild cavemen from hungry dinosaurs in order to avoid the extinction of the human race. And lastly, Angry Chopsticks is a flash-game that had players balancing an eco-system of bugs by stabbing them with a humongous pair of chopsticks.. squishy! Angry Chopsticks also features hilarious sfx to complement its bug squishing goodness.

So thus ended this year’s Game Jam.

The links below brings you to the demented creations of 19 sick minds.

Play Angry Chopsticks! Team: Alex Ong, Lim Leong Kee, Wang Hsin Jo, Alan Yeoh, Ivan Lim
Play Extincto! Team: Plentiful Lee, Krishnan, Zaid & Kung Shin Hean
Play Ecoseeds! Team : Johannes Reuben, Rex Choo Chee Fei, Buzz, Yee Hui Jien and Hasyimi aka ‘Fishcake’
Play Almost Extinct!. Team: Joseph G, Se Kye Li, David Tan, Ng Yun Bin & Yee I-van

Please help rate it over here. We need at least 40 rankings to be considered for judging.